The first people on the territory of the Vladimir region appeared in the Upper Paleolithic era, about 30-25 thousand years ago. At this time, following the retreating glacier, primitive man actively developed the central regions of the Russian Plain. The climate was more severe than the modern one, because the entire north of Eastern Europe was occupied by a glacier. In the Oksko-Klyazmensky interfluve, there were cold steppes with copses of spruce, pine and birch. The fauna was represented by mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison, wild horse, saiga, reindeer, arctic fox, brown bear, wolf, white hare, wild chicken, black grouse and herring gull.
The basis of the economy of the Upper Paleolithic man was the collective driven hunt for large herd animals and gathering. In the Vladimir region, three settlements of the Upper Paleolithic era are currently known:
Karacharovskaya site near Murom;
Rusanikha parking within the boundaries of Vladimir;
Sungir parking lot on the outskirts of Vladimir.
Parking lot Karacharovskaya
The first people came to the lands of the Lower Oka after the retreat of the glacier, in one of the periods of climate warming, which is twenty-five to thirty thousand years from our days. Settlers came from more southern territories, probably from the banks of the Don. The climate was much colder compared to the modern one, since the glacier was relatively close, occupying the entire north of Europe. The main landscape in the Lower Poochye was grassy steppes with small coniferous-deciduous copses; the map of streams and reservoirs was very different from the modern one. The fauna of that time was very variegated and more in line with the modern tundra and the sub-tundra zone. Reindeer, lemmings, Arctic foxes lived here; steppe antelopes, such as the saiga; forest dwellers - wolves, white hares, as well as now extinct mammoths, wild horses and woolly rhinos.
The northeastern part of the city of Murom, near the village. Karacharovo, left root bank of the Oka river. The size of the monument, as well as its current state, is unknown. The site was explored in 1877-1878. A.S. Uvarov. The collection consists of flint tools, cores, flakes, and faunal remains. The tools were made of brown, yellow, tobacco colored boulder flint, mainly on blades, less often on flakes.
Among the tools there are corner, side and middle incisors, scrapers, knives, plates, incl. with underworking with retouching, points, etc. The cores are mostly small in size. Large core-shaped objects from pebbles were also found, intended for removing plates and flakes. Some tools are treated with double-sided retouching. The parking lot is characterized by the presence of plates with a curved profile. Among the faunal remains are the bones of a mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and reindeer.
The dwellings were above ground, with a wooden frame, which was covered with animal skins. The main material for the manufacture of tools and weapons was flint; from it were made tools for processing stone and numerous tools for cutting meat, hides, processing wood, bone and leather, as well as rather elegant dart tips. The bone, horn and tusks of the mammoth were used to make spearheads and darts, household items and jewelry - bracelets, pendants, beads. Small animal sculptures were carved from bone at a high artistic level. On Sungiri, burials of the inhabitants of the site were also found, accompanied by things and decorations.
Rusanikha's parking lot
Northwestern outskirts of the city of Vladimir, the cape of the left root bank of the Rpen River at the confluence of the Kuziachka ravine into its valley, the Rusanikha tract. The dimensions are not determined, the height above the river is more than 50 m. The territory of the monument is built up. Researched (L.A. Mikhailova, 1981) 56 sq.m. The cultural layer in the form of lumpy gray loam, sometimes dark gray with inclusions of coal, calcified bones and ocher has a thickness of 0.65-0.70 m, lies at a depth of 2.48-3.18 m from the modern surface, can be interpreted as an ancient zone of soil formation.
More than 900 items were found, mainly from flint, as well as from slate, quartzite, opoka, incl. 163 tools made mainly on flakes, less often on blades. Chisel-like tools made of massive flakes of flint or shale predominate among the tools. A significant number of scrapers with a rounded working edge were found. Other stone tools include side-scrapers, scrapers, incisors (middle and lateral), punctures, drills, bumpers, and cutting tools. A spearhead from a mammoth tusk and a bone spatula were found.
Faunal remains are represented by the bones of a mammoth (prevailing), a wild horse, and a reindeer.
Remains of fireplaces and a hearth pit were found.
In terms of the conditions of occurrence of the cultural layer, its nature, and the peculiarities of stone tools, the site is very close to the Sungir site located relatively nearby and can be attributed to the same period of the Upper Paleolithic.
Interpreted by L.A. Mikhailova as a temporary camp of mammoth hunters.
Sungir parking lot
Today, scientists have evidence that this is a multilayered archaeological site, reflecting at least eight millennia (from 20 thousand years to 28 thousand years ago), during which primitive hunters stayed on Sungir. This is one of the most northern Upper Paleolithic settlements on the Russian Plain. Parking age approx. 29 - 25 thousand years.
The remains of only 8 individuals were found at the Sungir site.
Sungir 1 (Sungir1). 25 - 29 thousand years. Homo sapiens.
- A skull has been preserved from the first burial women lying by the stone, a spot of ocher and several bone beads.
- The second burial, located under the first, belonged to an adult man 50 - 60 years old. The leader of the tribe. The deceased was lying on his back in an extended position. With him were a flint knife, a scraper and a piece of bone.
The powerful physique of the Sungir 1 man is surprising. With a height of 180 cm, he was much stronger than a modern man and wider in the shoulders - the length of his collarbone was 190 mm. By morphological features, these are modern people, similar to Cro-Magnons of Western Europe... On the somewhat flattened facial skeletal bones, we can talk about some plaque Mongoloid or the emergence of these traits.
The chemical analysis of the mineral part of the bone tissue of the remains showed a rather high concentration of copper and cadmium, which indicates the presence in the diet of ancient people of a significant number of invertebrates, marine arthropods and molluscs. Also, the presence of trace elements indicates a large proportion of plant foods. But where did seafood, vegetables and fruits come from in the polar tundra? It is possible that the first Cro-Magnons came from the south.
The Sunghir skull is similar to the male skull No. 101 from the upper grotto in Zhoukoudian village... Skull No. 101 of the current races is similar to Ainu, and from fossils - on the people of the late Paleolithic of Europe. Of the modern populations, Sungir is approaching equatorials(Australians, Africans).
On it lay numerous beads from mammoth ivory.
“If you make an infusion of sorrel leaves and immerse the bones, horns or tusk of a mammoth in it, then after six weeks they can be cut like a tree. When taken out of the solution, they harden again after four days. "
The placement of the beads, which retained their original position, made it possible to reconstruct the clothing. The costume consisted of a closed shirt, pants connected to shoes, and possibly a raincoat. A cap was worn on his head, richly decorated with ivory beads and drilled fox fangs. On the hands were thin bracelets made of tusk and string of beads. Under the knees and on the ankles, there are also bandages of bead ligaments. On the inside of the legs, sewn beads formed long stripes connecting pants and shoes. In total, over 3, 5 thousand beads were sewn. Such richly dressed dead are unknown in the Paleolithic. The skeleton was thickly covered with ocher.
Next to him were flint wedges, ornate weapons, and amulets. There was also a spear made of mammoth bone, 2.4 meters long and surprisingly completely straight. Saiga antelope silhouette carved from stone.
The ritual object was found in the grave at Sungir. This is a large hollow bone with broken joints, which is why it has become a cylinder. Its cavity is tightly packed with ocher powder. But the most amazing thing is that this is ... a piece of the tibia of a Neanderthal. Paleoanthropologists, supporters of hostile relations between the two branches, interpret this find as an important argument in their favor. But in those days there were many other reasons for the death of a completely friendly person.
- Many features of the morphotype bring the Sungir people closer to modern Arctic populations and, in part, to the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) - a taxonomic association of hominins (European and some Asian paleoanthropines) dating from 200 or 130 to 35 thousand years.
- Kostenkovsko - Streletskaya culture (Kostenki XV). Among flint tools, triangular points with double-sided cutting and with a concave or oval base are especially interesting. These tools mainly served as the basis for attributing the Sungir to the Archery culture. In the rest, the types of tools, there is no great similarity between these sites. In addition to the tips, there are cutters, scrapers, side-scrapers, and chisel tools. The splitting technique (according to ON Bader) is primitive. The nuclei are amorphous, not prismatic. Almost all of the tools are made of boulder flint. According to O.N. Bader and A.N. Rogachev, Sungir most likely belongs to the late stage of the Streletskaya culture.
- From among the Upper Paleolithic neoanthropes, the Sunghir has a certain similarity with Oberkassel (height 176.7 cm) and some men of Pshedmosti (Pshedmosti XIV. Height 176.1 cm).
- By many external features, the Sungir burial is very similar to the burial of the same time from the Arena Candide site (Italy, 23,000 BC). Also, the anthropological features of the skull of a teenager from Arena Candide resemble those of the Sungir boy. First of all, attention is drawn to the strong alveolar prognathism on both turtles, which is expressed in a significant protrusion of the upper jaw. The contradictory combination of a rather strong protrusion of the nasal bones with a low nose bridge complements the uniqueness of the appearance of both boys.
Sungir 2 and Sungir 3 (Sungir 2.3). 25 - 29 thousand years. Homo sapiens.
Paired burial of a boy in an extended position 12-14 years old and a girl 9-10 years old. Both were buried at the same time, this is evidenced by the objects placed in the grave and, most importantly, spears from the mammoth tusk, which are longer than human skeletons. At other sites and in the cultural layer of Sungir, no similar tools or even their fragments were known. The length of the first spear was 2, 42 m, the second - 1, 66 m. In addition to the spears, each of the skeletons had several darts and daggers from the mammoth tusk. Children's clothes were richly decorated with beads, bracelets, rings and other adornments on their hands. The boy is wearing a belt on which hang ornaments - pendants - 250 fox teeth. Bracelets, rings on fingers, etc. Near the girl's skeleton there is a miniature spear made from a straightened mammoth tusk and lion's claws with holes. Rods, darts and flint points. Children are dressed in furs. The girl has them decorated with bone beads - 5200 beads. A bone needle with a hole and two "dart straighteners" were found.
The finds of Sungir are brighter than other Paleolithic sites, evidence of the existence in the 30th millennium BC. religions: "animism, belief in the afterlife, totemism, magic, ancestor worship, worship of the sun and moon, the lunar calendar and arithmetic counting."
Sungir 5
Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a man (Sungir 5) // Lebedinskaya G.V. - M .: Nauka, 2006 .-- P. 59.
Art, ornament, symbolism, astronomy
The found figurines of animals - a mammoth and a saiga horse - are rare works of primitive art.
In the burial of a girl and a boy, three ritual discs with a diameter of several centimeters, made of mammoth tusk, were found. The discs have four or eight slots running from the periphery to the central hole and located opposite each other. One disc contains ten slots that are asymmetric with respect to the center. Bone discs were found on the girl's head and body.
Mammoth ivory discs contain a geometric ornament, about which V.I. Larichev, in particular, reports: “Objects of art, combined with iconic records of calendar and astronomical content, are highly information-rich sources for studying the intellectual and spiritual spheres of life of the aboriginal population of the north of Eurasia. They appear at the early stage of the Upper Paleolithic (34 - 24 thousand years ago - the Syisk and Malta cultures of Siberia; the settlement of Sungir - in the north of European Russia), remain remarkable products of artistic creativity of the early and late Middle Ages and survive until ethnographic modernity. "
Objects similar to Sungir discs are found in all periods of ancient and modern history, mainly in relation to the habitat of the Slavs. Disks and circles, geometrically divided into equal 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 sectors, are still typical Slavic symbols. For example, the 4-sector disc symbolizes the god Horse, an indication of four key astronomical events: the spring equinox, summer solstice, autumn equinox, and winter solstice. 6-sector disk - Perun's wheel. 12-sector disk - the symbol of the god Kolyada (calendar).
“Such persistent adherence to one and the same informational traditions can be explained simply - in such objects of art, fundamental, not subject to oblivion, information about the temporal and spatial representations of the creators of the cultures of the preliterate history of mankind was imprinted. What is often perceived by archaeologists as samples of artistic creativity or cult-ritual, symbolic (votive) style of objects, is, in reality, a semblance of the canonized, sacred nature of "works", in which the most essential and hidden ( sacred) from everything known in Nature and man, in the relationship between people and the surrounding world (temporal rhythms of economic and cult-ritual actions; systems of natural science and religious ideas). "
Size: d-5.5 cm, thickness - 0.3 cm.
Excavations in 1969 at the Sungir (Dobroselskaya) Paleolithic site near the city of Vladimir. He was in the northern burial, on one of the bone darts. The author of the find: O.N. Bader.
Slotted disc made of mammoth ivory. It has one central round hole d-0.8 cm and 8 radial holes, elongated and tapered towards the center, measuring 1.3 x 0.7 cm.
HE. Bader suggests that colored straps or tails of Arctic foxes were attached to the slots of these discs, worn on spears or darts, and these darts served as a kind of ceremonial emblems or had some special ceremonial significance.
The disc was found in a pair burial of adolescents in the Sungir parking lot. It was included, along with other similar disks, zoomorphic figurines, bone beads, bracelets, rings, etc., into the burial inventory.
Material, technique: Mammoth tusk, carving, grinding, drilling.
Size: H-5.6 cm, thickness - from 4 to 1 mm.
Found during archaeological excavations in 1957 at the Sungir (Dobroselskaya) Paleolithic site near the city of Vladimir. The author of the find: O.N. Bader.
A flat zoomorphic figurine, decorated with dotted patterns and painted with ocher. The surface of the figure is carefully polished. On the hind leg there is a through hole, d-2-2.5 mm, made by double-sided drilling. The animal is shown schematically, in profile, each pair of legs is depicted as a wedge-shaped protrusion.
It was used as a pendant-amulet, as evidenced by the strong polish of the surface. The front of the head is sharpened almost like a blade, suggesting some kind of production function.
It is widely known as a symbol of the Sungir site.
Material, technique: Mammoth tusk; carving, grinding, drilling.
Size: H-18.5 cm, width: max - 4.8 cm, min - 1 cm, thickness - 1.1 cm.
Excavations in 1969 at the Sungir (Dobroselskaya) Paleolithic site near the city of Vladimir. He was in the northern burial, on the left side, in the area of the girl's abdomen. The author of the find: O.N. Bader.
A "wand" made of mammoth ivory, having a quadrangular head (5 x 4.5 cm), in the center of which a round hole d-2.3 cm is made. The handle of the "wand" 14 cm long has an oval cross-section, more flattened towards the end, slightly sharpened ... The "rod" most likely had a ritual purpose. HE. Bader considers it to be "a kind of belt buckle."
On the front side of the product, along the circumference of the hole on the head, along both sides of the head and up to the middle of the handle, there are shallowly drilled round points.
The "rod" was found in a pair burial of teenagers in the Sungir parking lot. He entered, along with other "wands", zoomorphic figurines.
The wands of the chiefs are also an exotic find for the Upper Paleolithic of Italy, while in France they are quite common.
A necklace was found, in the manufacture of which the surface of the beads was processed so that adjacent beads were perpendicular to each other.
Religion
People were buried in compliance with the most complex funeral rites. The discovered rich and varied material presents unique data on the way of life, religious beliefs and rituals of our ancestors. The finds of Sungir are brighter than other Paleolithic monuments, testifying to the existence in the 30th millennium BC. religions: "animism, belief in the afterlife, totemism, magic, ancestor worship, worship of the sun and moon, the lunar calendar and arithmetic counting."
The number of adornments accompanying the deceased increases enormously. For each buried 25-28 thousand years ago, there is an average of 4-5 thousand beads, pendants, amulets and other adornments, carefully and skillfully made from animal teeth, mammoth tusks and soft stones.
The paired burial of adolescents has a mirrored structure. In the cultural layer of another Upper Paleolithic settlement - Gagarino (Upper Don, Voronezh region) - an unfinished figurine from a mammoth tusk was discovered, which depicts two human figures in a similar pose - their heads touching. The double image is associated with proto-Slavic fertility cults, namely, with the myths of twins - the Slavic twin gods Kupalo and Kupalnitsa (brother and sister; Kupalo holiday is celebrated on the night of June 21-22). This burial ritual is associated with fertility cult.
Successful discovery and exploration of the Paleolithic site at the village. Karacharova on the Oka River in 1877 defined the idea of the northern boundaries of human settlement in Europe in the late Paleolithic for a long time. Only six decades later, in 1938, the Talitsky camp was discovered on Chusovaya, occupying an even more northerly position, which can be explained by the more limited spread of continental ice in the eastern regions of the country, which created the opportunity for further penetration of Paleolithic hunters to the north; in the middle zone of the European part of Russia, the borders of the ecumene on the Paleolithic map continued to remain the same.
At the same time, there is reason to believe that, despite the more southerly position, the Karacharovskaya site was closer to the boundaries of the glaciers of its time than the Talitsky site.
It is interesting in connection with this, the discovery in the summer of 1956 of a new Paleolithic site in Central Russia - at Dobroe Selo near the city of Vladimir on the river. Klyazma, located almost 70 km north of Karacharovskaya (Fig. 1).
The parking lot is located on the high left bank of the Klyazma, 1 o from the eastern outskirts of Vladimir, between Dobry Selo and Bogolyubov, near the highway (on the right) Moscow - Gorky - Kazan, 191 km from Moscow, at the beginning of the slope towards the villages of Suromna and Bogolyubovo , on the territory of the quarries of the Vladimir dry pressing brick plant.
The circumstances of the opening of the parking lot are as follows. In June 1955, the driver of the excavator of the plant A. F. Nacharov, while developing a large clay quarry, noticed bones falling into the buckets of the excavator and lying in the clay. The finds came across at a depth of 2.80-3.20 m for about 20 m, mainly along the northeastern wall of the quarry and 20-30 m from it into the depths of the quarry, although here, in the southwestern part of the quarry, the excavator was not allowed so deep and perhaps barely reaching the horizon with bones.
The bones lay in an even layer about 15-20 cm thick. There were accumulations of bones; in one of them, a hearth was noted, cut into two parts by an excavator bucket. The hearth, according to AF Nacharov, had a cauldron-like shape, a diameter of about 0.5 m, a depth from the edges of about 20 cm and was filled with a black carbonaceous layer; there were many bones near the hearth.
Among the finds were two supposedly stone pendants, flat, with a through hole at the edge.
The Vladimir Museum was unable to organize scientific observations at the site of the finds, except for individual excursions to the quarry in October and November 1955 under the guidance of the history teacher V.M. Maslov (from Vladimir). He collected additional material in the form of bones and several dozen flints without traces of processing and saw the remains of a fire pit in the wall of the quarry.
Having received approximate information about the finds in the quarry from the head of the Central Russian expedition of the IIMK N.N. Voronin, the author of this article in June 1956 sent students-archaeologists S.N. Astakhov and E.N. Chernykh to Dobroe Selo for a preliminary examination. who, however, did not make quite definite conclusions regarding the age of the finds.
At the beginning of September 1956, with the participation of SN Astakhov, I was able to examine the monument in detail. In addition to the usual work on external fixation, a vertical stripping of the preserved northeastern wall of the quarry was made for 37 m with a passage of 11 m in the landslide area and a test area of 14 m2 was opened at the bottom of the quarry next to the stripping (Fig. 2). These works established the presence of a Late Paleolithic site here. The geographical coordinates of the site are 56 ° 11 ′ north latitude and 40 ° 30 ′ east longitude from Greenwich.
SN Astakhov made graphic works, took samples for pollen analysis; security
pillars with inscriptions prohibiting further destruction of the monument.
Quarry of a brick factory (Fig. 3), developed with the help of a bucket excavator with several
fighting the entire length of the quarry to a depth of 4 m, destroyed the cultural layer in several narrow (3-4 m) strips along the faces, in their deepest part and, as you managed to establish by the reconnaissance
dissections, preserved the same strips of intact cultural layer between the destroyed ones; career allowed
roughly determine the area of the site by the distribution of cultural remains on its surface.
Lifting material at the bottom of the quarry along the outcropping of its northeastern wall and at the bottom of the first, northeastern
the eastern face stretches for 130 m to the very northwestern end of the quarry, where bones were found in the depressions of the third face (Fig. 3). The finds were recorded in a quarry at a distance of 35 m to the west of its northeastern wall. Taking into account the undoubted distribution of the cultural layer both up the slope to the south-west, and especially down, towards the valley, to the northeast of the outcrop of the first face and determining its minimum width of 50 m, we obtain the minimum site area equal to 6500 m2. Rather, it reaches and exceeds 10,000 m2, for, according to AF Nacharov, the number of finds increased towards the northeastern wall and the center of the site may have been to the east of the quarry, on an area that has not yet been touched. According to our excavations, the richest segment of the cultural layer is located along the main section (northeastern wall) of the quarry between 42 and 54 m and has a width of about 13 m; within the limits of this strip, our test plot was also oriented, uncovered nearby at the bottom of the quarry (Fig. 3).
In the section of the northeastern wall of the quarry, the cultural layer lies under a 3-4-meter thick layer of deluvial loams, which can be subdivided into two approximately equal horizons: above, under the loamy soil layer, there is brownish loam, heavy, columnar structure, calcareous along vertical cracks, with sparse, large pores (Fig. 4, 1). Beneath it is a layer of dark yellow loam with sparse pores (Fig. 4, II).
The cultural layer is a dense, non-layered brown loam with rare pores and weak ortstein interlayers in the middle; the upper half, and in some places a third of it, often has a less dark color than the lower horizons. The thickness of the cultural layer in the cleaned out areas of the outcrop ranges from 0.75 to 0.40 cm (Fig. 4, III). The layer contains humus and ash inclusions, small charcoal, hearth lenses, animal bones, flint pieces, flakes and fragments, flint and bone articles.
The cultural layer is underlain by gray-yellow, greenish sandy loam (Fig. 4, IV).
The significant depth of occurrence of cultural remains in itself already speaks of their great antiquity. The latter is also confirmed by the geomorphological and geological data obtained by the author both from personal observations and from the report of geologists of the Institute of Hyprostroematerials, who surveyed the site of the site.
The site is located at an altitude of about 50 m above the Klyazma, on a plateau that rises another ten meters away from the river and serves as a watershed between the two left tributaries of the Klyazma - the Rpen stream in the west and the river. Nerlju in the east. The Klyazma valley, to which the site gravitates, stretches here in the direction from southwest to northeast, is well expressed and has a width of several kilometers, mainly due to the floodplain. The root bank between Dobry Selo and Bogolyubov is cut by two deep ravines flowing into the Klyazma valley. The site is located at the beginning of the slope of the plateau towards the northeastern ravine, wide and undoubtedly ancient, with gentle slopes, along the bottom of which the Sungir stream flows (Fig. 5). Apparently, during the period when the site was inhabited, this ravine with a stream flowing through it already existed and played a role in choosing a site for anchorage - at the arrow between the stream and the Klyazma valley, which then had a much shallower depth.
On the left bank of the Klyazma, in the area of the site, the floodplain and in some places above it the ledge of the first floodplain terrace stands out well; The relief of the older terraces is strongly smoothed here, hidden under the cloak of deluvial deposits and requires special research.
Both ravines have a noticeable slope towards the Klyazma, due to which the flow of the Sungir stream in the Bogolyubovsky ravine is fast; the bottom of the Dobroselsky ravine is flat, without thalweg, soddy and swampy. The ravines have soddy, in places steep, less often steep walls; this applies in particular to the Dobroselsky ravine. In the outcrops, gravel-boulder moraine loams and other deposits are visible, which, along with other data, helps to get a general idea of the geology of the site (Fig. 6).
The most ancient rocks that come to the surface in ravines are, according to the Institute of Hyprostroematerials, variegated clays of the Tatar stage of the Permian system; in some places there are grayish-black clays of the Jurassic, gray sandy clays and quartzite sands of the Cretaceous system. Above them lies a stratum of Quaternary deposits, represented by: 1) preglacial fluvioglacial sands with gravel of crystalline and sedimentary rocks; 2) moraine loams and heavy sandy red-brown clays with gravel, pebbles and boulders of crystalline and sedimentary rocks; 3) on high watersheds, which includes the site, glacial deposits are overlapped by layers of cover formations, represented by sandy loam, sand and loam. Covering loams, overlapping and enclosing the remains of the Paleolithic site, lie in two even, sustained layers within, apparently, the entire area between the Dobroselsky and Bogolyubovsky ravines and are 2-3 m thick.
Rice. 7. Geological map of Quaternary sediments in the vicinity of the Paleolithic site at Dobroe Selo
1 - modern alluvial sandy-argillaceous deposits; 2 - ancient alluvial deposits of above-floodplain terraces; 3 - moraine clays and loams with gravel and boulders of predominantly sedimentary rocks, not everywhere overlapped by alluvial-deluvial deposits - sands and loams; 4 - Late Paleolithic site
Drilling performed here under cover loams also illuminated the upper layer of a brown moraine, with limestone nodules, up to the underlying intramoraine sands. According to the hypothesis of geologists of the Institute of Hyprostroimaterials, below the layer of intramoraine sands, the nature of the moraine obviously changes, since in a small outcrop along the Dobroselsky ravine at a depth of 5-7 m from its edge, sandy loams and loams are exposed, enriched with gravel and boulders of crystalline and sedimentary rocks.
Judging by the swampiness and the presence of a stream in the deep Bogolyubovsky ravine, the aquifer closest to the surface is confined to the moorified fluvioglacial sands (Qn R / fgl).
The described pattern of occurrence of Quaternary deposits at the site is in accordance with the data of the geological map of Quaternary deposits of this area (Fig. 7). The correlation between the cultural layer and the above-moraine loams allows us to confidently attribute the site to the post-Rissian, ie, to the Late Paleolithic time; further clarification of her age requires the use of facts of a different kind.
The remains of the fauna we collected at the site were identified by E. A. Wangenheim and examined by V. I. Gromov (Institute of Geology, USSR Academy of Sciences). It presents:
Elephas primigenius - mammoth;
Rangifer tarandus - Reindeer
Cervus sp. (Alces?) - moose (?);
Lepus sp. - Hare.
Equus caballus - horse;
Bos sp. aut Bison (?) - bison (?);
Vulpes lagopus - Arctic fox;
The bones of a reindeer were especially abundant; followed by a mammoth.
The fauna of the site at Dobroe Selo, according to V.I.Gromov, is quite typical for the Upper Paleolithic, but there are no grounds for a narrower determination of its age. It must be assumed that large excavations of the site will increase the list of animals that made up its composition, as well as determine their quantitative ratio with a greater degree of reliability. It is premature to discuss the absence of some typical representatives of the Upper Paleolithic fauna, such as, for example, the rhinoceros in the cited list.
More than two dozen pollen samples taken every 20 cm from all layers of the section described above (Fig. 4) were analyzed by G. N. Lisitsyna (Cameral laboratory of the IIMK), but, unfortunately, they almost did not contain pollen, which has been done so far. impossible paleophytological characteristics of the site.
In the area of the trial excavation, flint and fauna were located near the hearth spot, colored with coal and ocher (Fig. 8). On the outcrop of the northeastern wall of the quarry, a small hearth pit was recorded in the section, also filled with coals and pieces of bright red ocher, small fragments of bones and flint fragments (Fig. 9, 1). Thus, we received confirmation of the observation of AF Nacharov, who described the same hearth pit.
The collection collected during the survey consists of 219 individual numbers according to the collection inventory, not counting the fauna. The presence of only one cultural horizon at the site gives grounds to combine the finds taken from the cultural layer with excavation material from the bottom of the quarry when describing material remains. The main interest is the stone inventory of tools, blanks and waste products; we give a brief description of it.
Large and small shapeless pieces of variegated boulder flint (brown, yellow, reddish, gray, lilac) often with a lime crust on the surface, as well as pieces of quartz, quartzite, shale and silicified limestone. The material is very rough and not suitable for crafts. In total - 32 copies.
Pieces and fragments of the same stone material with traces of crushing and splitting - 50 pieces.
Core-shaped pieces and cores are coarse, short, poorly expressed, which can be attributed to the poor quality of flint material - 6 specimens.
Medium-sized cores are more pronounced than others; they have massive proportions, two or three or more working sides, covered with the edges of short chips; in this case, one faceted side served as a striking platform for chips of the other side (Fig. 10, 1, 2).
Flakes large and small, mostly coarse, massive, shapeless (Fig. 10, 3), with a crust on the back - 90 pieces. In those cases when the angle between the conchoidal fracture and the striking platform of the flake is established, it is close to a straight angle. Traces of preliminary underworking of the striking platform are rare.
Impact stones, bumpers - 3 pcs. One of them is large, heavy, with highly fragmented, rounded impact surfaces. The other is a flat gray slate pebble with one of the long ribs,
by finely crushed blows or strong pressure on a hard surface with sharp edges (?).
Knife-shaped plates of irregular shape, with poorly cut back, relatively short (Fig. 10, 5); one of them is longer, curved (Fig. 10, 6), the other is miniature (Fig. 10, 4); in total - 3 copies.
Secondary tools are still very few in number; here is a list of them.
Massive flint flake with fine retouch along the steep edge, apparently obtained as a result of his work (Fig. 10, 5).
Flat elongated flakes (4 specimens) with fine sharpening retouch along one edge - cutting tools (Fig. 10, 7, 9-11).
Flint flakes (3 specimens) with abrupt scraping retouch along the edge, forming a rounded working edge; two of them are complete scrapers (Fig. 11, 1, 2).
One flake with fine retouch at the edge (Fig. 11, 3).
Kremium flakes (5 specimens) with minor incisor-type chips at the corners (Fig. I, 4, 5, 6). One of them is multifaceted (Fig. 11, 7), and one is a good lateral incisor (Fig. 11, 8).
One large incisal cleavage from a flake.
All incisors and incisor spalls do not have retouched areas, they were made on random flakes.
There are two small ball-shaped pieces of ecaillee type (fig. 11,11,12).
Tool on a flake with fine, abrupt retouch along the curved edge (Fig. 11, 9).
Finally, one of the most typical completed tools is a leaf-shaped tip made from a massive knife-like blade (Fig. 11, 10).
Some varieties of flint, predominantly of lighter shades (for example, the leaf-shaped point just described), have undergone rather strong patinization; others (brown flint) are not affected by it at all.
The handicrafts also include a piece of gray sandstone, flattened, rounded in plan, with a diameter of 7.3 X 6.8 cm, on the flatter side it has an oval-shaped hole knocked out by numerous blows, with an area of 3.5 X 2.5 cm, a depth of 0, 5 cm (Fig. 12, 4). This object, which has obvious traces of artificial processing, most likely served as an anvil or stand on which some hard material, probably flint, was processed for a long time.
Certain traces of processing are also present on several bones. These include: the base of the horn of a red deer, cut in a circle with a very strong blade and then broken (Fig. 13, 2), the opposite, massive end of the horn is strongly smoothed; the rib of a reindeer, with clearly visible circular cuts and traces of subsequent fracture at one end (Fig. 12, 3); one fragment of a large mammoth bone with numerous incisions on the surface (Fig. 13, 1); at the apex of the mammoth femur epiphysis there is a hollowed-out large hole (Fig. 13, 3); on one oblong and concave plate from the mammoth tusk there are traces of its use and numerous dents and scratches on the outer surface. Many bones bear traces of artificial cleavage for the purpose of being used for bone crafts (Fig. 12, 2) or breaking for the extraction of bone marrow (for example, a broken radius of a reindeer; Fig. 12, 1).
Such abundant traces of bone and horn processing make it possible to count on the finds of finished handicrafts made from these materials during further exploration of the site.
The collection also contains burnt bones, fragments of large bivalve shells, split along the longitudinal axis of belemnites, and a piece of ocher.
The archaeological dating of the site at Dobroe Selo is still hampered by the poverty of stone tools. However, even now the latter reveals some common features with the Late Paleolithic sites of the Don and Dnieper basins, such as Kostenki IV, Borshevo II, Gontsy, Timonovka. Thus, leaf-like points similar to ours are especially well represented in the upper layer of the Kostenki IV site, and points with a blunt edge are present in the lower layer of the Borshevskaya II site. Interestingly, at the Borshevskaya II site, as well as at the Dobroe Selo site, there are no rhino bones, while in Kostenkovskaya IV they are. found in very small numbers.
All of the listed sites belong to the Upper Paleolithic. By analogy, the site at Dobroe Selo can be dated to the Upper Paleolithic time. Geological and fauna data do not contradict this dating.
It should be noted that the similarity of our site with the above-mentioned Don sites is far from complete; so, for example, on the Klyazma there are no inserts made of microplates, which are so numerous on the Don (for example, in Kostenki IV). The stone inventory of the Sungir site has a somewhat more archaic appearance, thus demonstrating general similarity with sites of the Streletskaya type and the lower layer of Kostenok I.
The scientific value of the newly discovered Paleolithic site on the Klyaz-me is great not only for studying the problem of the initial advancement of the primitive population of Europe from south to north, but also for illuminating the ratio of southern and eastern cultural elements among the original settlers of the European North.
In conclusion, it is necessary to emphasize the proximity of the camp at Dobroe Selo with the mouth of the river. Nerl and, consequently, with the valley of the ancient course of the Nerl, which was one of the main ancient river arteries of the Russian Plain in the Middle Quaternary. The latter circumstance creates interesting perspectives for paleogeographic research in this area and for the search for new Paleolithic sites here.
The first step in this direction was taken by the IIMK of the USSR Academy of Sciences immediately after the end of reconnaissance work at the parking lot near Dobroe Selo: exploration work was organized along the right bank of the Klyazma from Vladimir to Kovrov. The oldest discovered monuments were the sites of the Bronze Age; no Paleolithic remains were found along this route. - Soviet and Russian historian and archaeologist, researcher of Chuvashia.
The first people came to the lands of the Lower Oka after the retreat of the glacier, in one of the periods of climate warming, which is twenty-five to thirty thousand years from our days. Settlers came from more southern territories, probably from the banks of the Don. The climate was much colder compared to the modern one, since the glacier was relatively close, occupying the entire north of Europe. The main landscape in the Lower Poochye was grassy steppes with small coniferous-deciduous copses; the map of streams and reservoirs was very different from the modern one. The fauna of that time was very variegated and more in line with the modern tundra and the sub-tundra zone. Reindeer, lemmings, Arctic foxes lived here; steppe antelopes, such as the saiga; forest dwellers - wolves, white hares, as well as now extinct mammoths, wild horses and woolly rhinos.
One of the first Paleolithic monuments in Russia, the Karacharovskaya site, was discovered in the Murom region. In 1877, Count Alexei Sergeevich Uvarov, who stood at the origins of Russian archeology, discovered archaic flint tools on the territory of his estate, on the slope of the Karacharovsky ravine, and made small excavations here. Unfortunately, today we know little about these studies, but they were the first scientific excavations on the Lower Oka. On the territory of the region there are two more sites of this period, which were subjected to excavations. One of them, Sungir near Vladimir, gained worldwide fame thanks to many years of research carried out until recently. Based on the materials of these sites, it is possible to reconstruct the life of the people of the late Paleolithic in our lands.
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The dwellings were above ground, with a wooden frame, which was covered with animal skins. The main material for the manufacture of tools and weapons was flint; from it were made tools for processing stone and numerous tools for cutting meat, hides, processing wood, bone and leather, as well as rather elegant dart tips. The bone, horn and tusks of the mammoth were used to make spearheads and darts, household items and jewelry - bracelets, pendants, beads. Small animal sculptures were carved from bone at a high artistic level. On Sungiri, burials of the inhabitants of the site were also found, accompanied by things and decorations.
The first people on the territory of the Vladimir region appeared in the Upper Paleolithic era, about 30-25 thousand years ago. At this time, following the retreating glacier, primitive man actively developed the central regions of the Russian Plain. The climate was more severe than the modern one, because the entire north of Eastern Europe was occupied by a glacier. In the Oksko-Klyazmensky interfluve, there were cold steppes with copses of spruce, pine and birch. The fauna was represented by mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison, wild horse, saiga, reindeer, arctic fox, brown bear, wolf, white hare, wild chicken, black grouse and herring gull.
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The basis of the economy of the Upper Paleolithic man was the collective driven hunt for large herd animals and gathering. In the Vladimir region, three settlements of the Upper Paleolithic era are currently known:
Karacharovskaya site near Murom;
Rusanikha parking within the boundaries of Vladimir;
Sungir parking lot on the outskirts of Vladimir.
Parking lot Karacharovskaya
The first people came to the lands of the Lower Oka after the retreat of the glacier, in one of the periods of climate warming, which is twenty-five to thirty thousand years from our days. Settlers came from more southern territories, probably from the banks of the Don. The climate was much colder compared to the modern one, since the glacier was relatively close, occupying the entire north of Europe. The main landscape in the Lower Poochye was grassy steppes with small coniferous-deciduous copses; the map of streams and reservoirs was very different from the modern one. The fauna of that time was very variegated and more in line with the modern tundra and the sub-tundra zone. Reindeer, lemmings, Arctic foxes lived here; steppe antelopes, such as the saiga; forest dwellers - wolves, white hares, as well as now extinct mammoths, wild horses and woolly rhinos.
The northeastern part of the city of Murom, near the village. Karacharovo, left root bank of the Oka river. The size of the monument, as well as its current state, is unknown. The site was explored in 1877-1878. A.S. Uvarov. The collection consists of flint tools, cores, flakes, and faunal remains. The tools were made of brown, yellow, tobacco colored boulder flint, mainly on blades, less often on flakes.
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Among the tools there are corner, side and middle incisors, scrapers, knives, plates, incl. with underworking with retouching, points, etc. The cores are mostly small in size. Large core-shaped objects from pebbles were also found, intended for removing plates and flakes. Some tools are treated with double-sided retouching. The parking lot is characterized by the presence of plates with a curved profile. Among the faunal remains are the bones of a mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and reindeer.
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The dwellings were above ground, with a wooden frame, which was covered with animal skins. The main material for the manufacture of tools and weapons was flint; from it were made tools for processing stone and numerous tools for cutting meat, hides, processing wood, bone and leather, as well as rather elegant dart tips. The bone, horn and tusks of the mammoth were used to make spearheads and darts, household items and jewelry - bracelets, pendants, beads. Small animal sculptures were carved from bone at a high artistic level. On Sungiri, burials of the inhabitants of the site were also found, accompanied by things and decorations.
Rusanikha's parking lot
Northwestern outskirts of the city of Vladimir, the cape of the left root bank of the Rpen River at the confluence of the Kuziachka ravine into its valley, the Rusanikha tract. The dimensions are not determined, the height above the river is more than 50 m. The territory of the monument is built up. Researched (L.A. Mikhailova, 1981) 56 sq.m. The cultural layer in the form of lumpy gray loam, sometimes dark gray with inclusions of coal, calcified bones and ocher has a thickness of 0.65-0.70 m, lies at a depth of 2.48-3.18 m from the modern surface, can be interpreted as an ancient zone of soil formation.
More than 900 items were found, mainly from flint, as well as from slate, quartzite, opoka, incl. 163 tools made mainly on flakes, less often on blades. Chisel-like tools made of massive flakes of flint or shale predominate among the tools. A significant number of scrapers with a rounded working edge were found. Other stone tools include side-scrapers, scrapers, incisors (middle and lateral), punctures, drills, bumpers, and cutting tools. A spearhead from a mammoth tusk and a bone spatula were found.
Faunal remains are represented by the bones of a mammoth (prevailing), a wild horse, and a reindeer.
Remains of fireplaces and a hearth pit were found.
In terms of the conditions of occurrence of the cultural layer, its nature, and the peculiarities of stone tools, the site is very close to the Sungir site located relatively nearby and can be attributed to the same period of the Upper Paleolithic.
Interpreted by L.A. Mikhailova as a temporary camp of mammoth hunters.
Sungir parking lot
Today, scientists have evidence that this is a multilayered archaeological site, reflecting at least eight millennia (from 20 thousand years to 28 thousand years ago), during which primitive hunters stayed on Sungir. This is one of the most northern Upper Paleolithic settlements on the Russian Plain. Parking age approx. 29 - 25 thousand years.
The remains of only 8 individuals were found at the Sungir site.
Sungir 1 (Sungir1). 25 - 29 thousand years. Homo sapiens.
A skull remains from the first burial women lying by the stone, a spot of ocher and several bone beads.
- The second burial, located under the first, belonged to an adult man 50 - 60 years old. The leader of the tribe. The deceased was lying on his back in an extended position. With him were a flint knife, a scraper and a piece of bone.
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A sculptural portrait of a man from the Sungir site. Reconstruction by M.M. Gerasimov.
The powerful physique of the Sungir 1 man is surprising. With a height of 180 cm, he was much stronger than a modern man and wider in the shoulders - the length of his collarbone was 190 mm. By morphological features, these are modern people, similar to Cro-Magnons of Western Europe... On the somewhat flattened facial skeletal bones, we can talk about some plaque Mongoloid or the emergence of these traits.
The chemical analysis of the mineral part of the bone tissue of the remains showed a rather high concentration of copper and cadmium, which indicates the presence in the diet of ancient people of a significant number of invertebrates, marine arthropods and molluscs. Also, the presence of trace elements indicates a large proportion of plant foods. But where did seafood, vegetables and fruits come from in the polar tundra? It is possible that the first Cro-Magnons came from the south.
The Sunghir skull is similar to the male skull No. 101 from the upper grotto in Zhoukoudian village... Skull No. 101 of the current races is similar to Ainu, and from fossils - on the people of the late Paleolithic of Europe. Of the modern populations, Sungir is approaching equatorials(Australians, Africans).
On it lay numerous beads from mammoth ivory.
“If you make an infusion of sorrel leaves and immerse the bones, horns or tusk of a mammoth in it, then after six weeks they can be cut like a tree. When taken out of the solution, they harden again after four days. "
The placement of the beads, which retained their original position, made it possible to reconstruct the clothing. The costume consisted of a closed shirt, pants connected to shoes, and possibly a raincoat. A cap was worn on his head, richly decorated with ivory beads and drilled fox fangs. On the hands were thin bracelets made of tusk and string of beads. Under the knees and on the ankles, there are also bandages of bead ligaments. On the inside of the legs, sewn beads formed long stripes connecting pants and shoes. In total, over 3, 5 thousand beads were sewn. Such richly dressed dead are unknown in the Paleolithic. The skeleton was thickly covered with ocher.
Next to him were flint wedges, ornate weapons, and amulets. There was also a spear made of mammoth bone, 2.4 meters long and surprisingly completely straight. Saiga antelope silhouette carved from stone.
The ritual object was found in the grave at Sungir. This is a large hollow bone with broken joints, which is why it has become a cylinder. Its cavity is tightly packed with ocher powder. But the most amazing thing is that this is ... a piece of the tibia of a Neanderthal. Paleoanthropologists, supporters of hostile relations between the two branches, interpret this find as an important argument in their favor. But in those days there were many other reasons for the death of a completely friendly person.
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Reconstruction of the clothes of a Sunghir man.
Many features of the morphotype bring the Sungir people closer to modern Arctic populations and, in part, to the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) - a taxonomic association of hominins (European and some Asian paleoanthropines) dating from 200 or 130 to 35 thousand years.
Kostenkovsko - Streletskaya culture (Kostenki XV). Among flint tools, triangular points with double-sided cutting and with a concave or oval base are especially interesting. These tools mainly served as the basis for attributing the Sungir to the Archery culture. In the rest, the types of tools, there is no great similarity between these sites. In addition to the tips, there are cutters, scrapers, side-scrapers, and chisel tools. The splitting technique (according to ON Bader) is primitive. The nuclei are amorphous, not prismatic. Almost all of the tools are made of boulder flint. According to O.N. Bader and A.N. Rogachev, Sungir most likely belongs to the late stage of the Streletskaya culture.
Among the Upper Paleolithic neoanthropes, the Sunghir has a certain similarity with Oberkassel (height 176.7 cm) and some men of Pshedmosti (Pshedmosti XIV. Height 176.1 cm).
By many external features, the Sungir burial is very similar to the burial of the same time from the Arena Candide site (Italy, 23,000 BC). Also, the anthropological features of the skull of a teenager from Arena Candide resemble those of the Sungir boy. First of all, attention is drawn to the strong alveolar prognathism on both turtles, which is expressed in a significant protrusion of the upper jaw. The contradictory combination of a rather strong protrusion of the nasal bones with a low nose bridge complements the uniqueness of the appearance of both boys.
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Sculptural portraits of a girl and a boy from the Sungir camp. Reconstruction by G.V. Lebedinskaya and T.S. Surnina.
Sungir 2 and Sungir 3 (Sungir 2.3). 25 - 29 thousand years. Homo sapiens.
Paired burial of a boy in an extended position 12-14 years old and a girl 9-10 years old. Both were buried at the same time, as evidenced by the objects placed in the grave and, most importantly, spears from the mammoth tusk, which are longer than human skeletons. At other sites and in the cultural layer of Sungir, no similar tools or even their fragments were known. The length of the first spear was 2, 42 m, the second - 1, 66 m. In addition to the spears, each of the skeletons had several darts and daggers from the mammoth tusk. Children's clothes were richly decorated with beads, bracelets, rings and other adornments on their hands. The boy is wearing a belt on which hang ornaments - pendants - 250 fox teeth. Bracelets, rings on fingers, etc. Near the girl's skeleton there is a miniature spear from a straightened mammoth tusk and lion's claws with holes. Rods, darts and flint points. Children are dressed in furs. The girl has them decorated with bone beads - 5200 beads. A bone needle with a hole and two "dart straighteners" were found.
The finds of Sungir are brighter than other Paleolithic monuments, testifying to the existence in the 30th millennium BC. religions: "animism, belief in the afterlife, totemism, magic, ancestor worship, worship of the sun and moon, lunar calendar and arithmetic counting."
Sungir 5
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Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a man (Sungir 5) // Lebedinskaya G.V. - M .: Nauka, 2006 .-- P. 59.
Art, ornament, symbolism, astronomy
The found figurines of animals - a mammoth and a saiga horse - are rare works of primitive art.
In the burial of a girl and a boy, three ritual discs with a diameter of several centimeters, made of mammoth tusk, were found. The discs have four or eight slots running from the periphery to the central hole and located opposite each other. One disc contains ten slots that are asymmetric with respect to the center. Bone discs were found on the girl's head and body.
Mammoth ivory discs contain a geometric ornament, about which V.I. Larichev, in particular, reports: “Objects of art, combined with iconic records of calendar and astronomical content, are highly information-rich sources for studying the intellectual and spiritual spheres of life of the aboriginal population of northern Eurasia. They appear at the early stage of the Upper Paleolithic (34 - 24 thousand years ago - the Syisk and Malta cultures of Siberia; the settlement of Sungir - in the north of European Russia), remain remarkable products of artistic creativity of the early and late Middle Ages and survive until ethnographic modernity. "
Objects similar to Sungir discs are found in all periods of ancient and modern history, mainly in relation to the habitat of the Slavs. Disks and circles, geometrically divided into equal 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 sectors, are still typical Slavic symbols. For example, the 4-sector disc symbolizes the god Horse, an indication of four key astronomical events: the spring equinox, summer solstice, autumn equinox, and winter solstice. 6-sector disk - Perun's wheel. 12-sector disk - the symbol of the god Kolyada (calendar).
“Such persistent adherence to the same informational traditions can be easily explained - in such objects of art, fundamental, not subject to oblivion, information about the temporal and spatial representations of the creators of the cultures of the preliterate history of mankind was imprinted. What is often perceived by archaeologists as examples of artistic creativity or cult-ritual, symbolic (votive) style of objects, is, in reality, a semblance of the canonized, sacred nature of "works", in which the most essential and hidden ( sacred) from everything known in Nature and man, in the relationship between people and the surrounding world (temporal rhythms of economic and cult-ritual actions; systems of natural science and religious ideas). "
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Slotted discs. Mammoth tusk
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A slotted disk from the excavations of the Palaeolithic site Sungir. The disc is 25 thousand years old.
Size: d-5.5 cm, thickness - 0.3 cm.
Excavations in 1969 at the Sungir (Dobroselskaya) Paleolithic site near the city of Vladimir. He was in the northern burial, on one of the bone darts. The author of the find: O.N. Bader.
Slotted disc made of mammoth ivory. It has one central round hole d-0.8 cm and 8 radial holes, elongated and tapered towards the center, measuring 1.3 x 0.7 cm.
HE. Bader suggests that colored straps or tails of Arctic foxes were attached to the slots of these discs, worn on spears or darts, and these darts served as a kind of ceremonial emblems or had some special ceremonial significance.
The disc was found in a pair burial of adolescents in the Sungir parking lot. It was included, along with other similar disks, zoomorphic figurines, bone beads, bracelets, rings, etc., into the burial inventory.
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Works of primitive art.
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Figurine of a horse (saiga) from the excavations of the Palaeolithic site Sungir. The figurine is 25 thousand years old.
Material, technique: Mammoth tusk, carving, grinding, drilling.
Size: H-5.6 cm, thickness - from 4 to 1 mm.
Found during archaeological excavations in 1957 at the Sungir (Dobroselskaya) Paleolithic site near the city of Vladimir. The author of the find: O.N. Bader.
A flat zoomorphic figurine, decorated with dotted patterns and painted with ocher. The surface of the figure is carefully polished. On the hind leg there is a through hole, d-2-2.5 mm, made by double-sided drilling. The animal is shown schematically, in profile, each pair of legs is depicted as a wedge-shaped protrusion.
It was used as a pendant-amulet, as evidenced by the strong polish of the surface. The front of the head is sharpened almost like a blade, suggesting some kind of production function.
It is widely known as a symbol of the Sungir site.
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"Rod" from the excavations of the Paleolithic site Sungir. 25 thousand years.
Material, technique: Mammoth tusk; carving, grinding, drilling.
Size: H-18.5 cm, width: max - 4.8 cm, min - 1 cm, thickness - 1.1 cm.
Excavations in 1969 at the Sungir (Dobroselskaya) Paleolithic site near the city of Vladimir. He was in the northern burial, on the left side, in the area of the girl's abdomen. The author of the find: O.N. Bader.
A "wand" made of mammoth ivory, having a quadrangular head (5 x 4.5 cm), in the center of which a round hole d-2.3 cm is made. The handle of the "wand" 14 cm long has an oval cross-section, more flattened towards the end, slightly sharpened ... The "rod" most likely had a ritual purpose. HE. Bader considers it to be "a kind of belt buckle."
On the front side of the product, along the circumference of the hole on the head, along both sides of the head and up to the middle of the handle, there are shallowly drilled round points.
The "rod" was found in a pair burial of teenagers in the Sungir parking lot. He entered, along with other "wands", zoomorphic figurines. "
Labor tools (flint)
Religion
People were buried in compliance with the most complex funeral rites. The discovered rich and varied material presents unique data on the way of life, religious beliefs and rituals of our ancestors. The finds of Sungir are brighter than other Paleolithic monuments, testifying to the existence in the 30th millennium BC. religions: "animism, belief in the afterlife, totemism, magic, ancestor worship, worship of the sun and moon, the lunar calendar and arithmetic counting."
The number of adornments accompanying the deceased increases enormously. For each buried 25-28 thousand years ago, there is an average of 4-5 thousand beads, pendants, amulets and other adornments, carefully and skillfully made from animal teeth, mammoth tusks and soft stones.
The paired burial of adolescents has a mirrored structure. In the cultural layer of another Upper Paleolithic settlement - Gagarino (Upper Don, Voronezh region) - an unfinished figurine from a mammoth tusk was discovered, which depicts two human figures in a similar pose - their heads touching. The double image is associated with proto-Slavic fertility cults, namely, with the myths of twins - the Slavic twin gods Kupalo and Kupalnitsa (brother and sister; Kupalo holiday is celebrated on the night of June 21-22). This burial ritual is associated with fertility cult.
The first people on the territory of the Vladimir region appeared in the Upper Paleolithic era, about 30-25 thousand years ago. At this time, following the retreating glacier, primitive man actively developed the central regions of the Russian Plain. The climate was more severe than the modern one, because the entire north of Eastern Europe was occupied by a glacier. In the Oksko-Klyazmensky interfluve, there were cold steppes with copses of spruce, pine and birch. The fauna was represented by mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison, wild horse, saiga, reindeer, arctic fox, brown bear, wolf, white hare, wild chicken, black grouse and herring gull.
The basis of the economy of the Upper Paleolithic man was the collective driven hunt for large herd animals and gathering. In the Vladimir region, three settlements of the Upper Paleolithic era are currently known:
Karacharovskaya site near Murom;
Rusanikha parking within the boundaries of Vladimir;
Sungir parking lot on the outskirts of Vladimir.
Parking lot Karacharovskaya
The first people came to the lands of the Lower Oka after the retreat of the glacier, in one of the periods of climate warming, which is twenty-five to thirty thousand years from our days. Settlers came from more southern territories, probably from the banks of the Don. The climate was much colder compared to the modern one, since the glacier was relatively close, occupying the entire north of Europe. The main landscape in the Lower Poochye was grassy steppes with small coniferous-deciduous copses; the map of streams and reservoirs was very different from the modern one. The fauna of that time was very variegated and more in line with the modern tundra and the sub-tundra zone. Reindeer, lemmings, Arctic foxes lived here; steppe antelopes, such as the saiga; forest dwellers - wolves, white hares, as well as now extinct mammoths, wild horses and woolly rhinos.
The northeastern part of the city of Murom, near the village. Karacharovo, left root bank of the Oka river. The size of the monument, as well as its current state, is unknown. The site was explored in 1877-1878. A.S. Uvarov. The collection consists of flint tools, cores, flakes, and faunal remains. The tools were made of brown, yellow, tobacco colored boulder flint, mainly on blades, less often on flakes.
Among the tools there are corner, side and middle incisors, scrapers, knives, plates, incl. with underworking with retouching, points, etc. The cores are mostly small in size. Large core-shaped objects from pebbles were also found, intended for removing plates and flakes. Some tools are treated with double-sided retouching. The parking lot is characterized by the presence of plates with a curved profile. Among the faunal remains are the bones of a mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and reindeer.
The dwellings were above ground, with a wooden frame, which was covered with animal skins. The main material for the manufacture of tools and weapons was flint; from it were made tools for processing stone and numerous tools for cutting meat, hides, processing wood, bone and leather, as well as rather elegant dart tips. The bone, horn and tusks of the mammoth were used to make spearheads and darts, household items and jewelry - bracelets, pendants, beads. Small animal sculptures were carved from bone at a high artistic level. On Sungiri, burials of the inhabitants of the site were also found, accompanied by things and decorations.
Rusanikha's parking lot
Northwestern outskirts of the city of Vladimir, the cape of the left root bank of the Rpen River at the confluence of the Kuziachka ravine into its valley, the Rusanikha tract. The dimensions are not determined, the height above the river is more than 50 m. The territory of the monument is built up. Researched (L.A. Mikhailova, 1981) 56 sq.m. The cultural layer in the form of lumpy gray loam, sometimes dark gray with inclusions of coal, calcified bones and ocher has a thickness of 0.65-0.70 m, lies at a depth of 2.48-3.18 m from the modern surface, can be interpreted as an ancient zone of soil formation.
More than 900 items were found, mainly from flint, as well as from slate, quartzite, opoka, incl. 163 tools made mainly on flakes, less often on blades. Chisel-like tools made of massive flakes of flint or shale predominate among the tools. A significant number of scrapers with a rounded working edge were found. Other stone tools include side-scrapers, scrapers, incisors (middle and lateral), punctures, drills, bumpers, and cutting tools. A spearhead from a mammoth tusk and a bone spatula were found.
Faunal remains are represented by the bones of a mammoth (prevailing), a wild horse, and a reindeer.
Remains of fireplaces and a hearth pit were found.
In terms of the conditions of occurrence of the cultural layer, its nature, and the peculiarities of stone tools, the site is very close to the Sungir site located relatively nearby and can be attributed to the same period of the Upper Paleolithic.
Interpreted by L.A. Mikhailova as a temporary camp of mammoth hunters.
Sungir parking lot
Today, scientists have evidence that this is a multilayered archaeological site, reflecting at least eight millennia (from 20 thousand years to 28 thousand years ago), during which primitive hunters stayed on Sungir. This is one of the most northern Upper Paleolithic settlements on the Russian Plain. Parking age approx. 29 - 25 thousand years.
The remains of only 8 individuals were found at the Sungir site.
Sungir 1 (Sungir1). 25 - 29 thousand years. Homo sapiens.
A skull remains from the first burial women lying by the stone, a spot of ocher and several bone beads.
- The second burial, located under the first, belonged to an adult man 50 - 60 years old. The leader of the tribe. The deceased was lying on his back in an extended position. With him were a flint knife, a scraper and a piece of bone.
A sculptural portrait of a man from the Sungir site. Reconstruction by M.M. Gerasimov.
The powerful physique of the Sungir 1 man is surprising. With a height of 180 cm, he was much stronger than a modern man and wider in the shoulders - the length of his collarbone was 190 mm. By morphological features, these are modern people, similar to Cro-Magnons of Western Europe... On the somewhat flattened facial skeletal bones, we can talk about some plaque Mongoloid or the emergence of these traits.
The chemical analysis of the mineral part of the bone tissue of the remains showed a rather high concentration of copper and cadmium, which indicates the presence in the diet of ancient people of a significant number of invertebrates, marine arthropods and molluscs. Also, the presence of trace elements indicates a large proportion of plant foods. But where did seafood, vegetables and fruits come from in the polar tundra? It is possible that the first Cro-Magnons came from the south.
The Sunghir skull is similar to the male skull No. 101 from the upper grotto in Zhoukoudian village... Skull No. 101 of the current races is similar to Ainu, and from fossils - on the people of the late Paleolithic of Europe. Of the modern populations, Sungir is approaching equatorials(Australians, Africans).
On it lay numerous beads from mammoth ivory.
“If you make an infusion of sorrel leaves and immerse the bones, horns or tusk of a mammoth in it, then after six weeks they can be cut like a tree. When taken out of the solution, they harden again after four days. "
The placement of the beads, which retained their original position, made it possible to reconstruct the clothing. The costume consisted of a closed shirt, pants connected to shoes, and possibly a raincoat. A cap was worn on his head, richly decorated with ivory beads and drilled fox fangs. On the hands were thin bracelets made of tusk and string of beads. Under the knees and on the ankles, there are also bandages of bead ligaments. On the inside of the legs, sewn beads formed long stripes connecting pants and shoes. In total, over 3, 5 thousand beads were sewn. Such richly dressed dead are unknown in the Paleolithic. The skeleton was thickly covered with ocher.
Next to him were flint wedges, ornate weapons, and amulets. There was also a spear made of mammoth bone, 2.4 meters long and surprisingly completely straight. Saiga antelope silhouette carved from stone.
The ritual object was found in the grave at Sungir. This is a large hollow bone with broken joints, which is why it has become a cylinder. Its cavity is tightly packed with ocher powder. But the most amazing thing is that this is ... a piece of the tibia of a Neanderthal. Paleoanthropologists, supporters of hostile relations between the two branches, interpret this find as an important argument in their favor. But in those days there were many other reasons for the death of a completely friendly person.
Reconstruction of the clothes of a Sunghir man.
Many features of the morphotype bring the Sungir people closer to modern Arctic populations and, in part, to the Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) - a taxonomic association of hominins (European and some Asian paleoanthropines) dating from 200 or 130 to 35 thousand years.
Kostenkovsko - Streletskaya culture (Kostenki XV). Among flint tools, triangular points with double-sided cutting and with a concave or oval base are especially interesting. These tools mainly served as the basis for attributing the Sungir to the Archery culture. In the rest, the types of tools, there is no great similarity between these sites. In addition to the tips, there are cutters, scrapers, side-scrapers, and chisel tools. The splitting technique (according to ON Bader) is primitive. The nuclei are amorphous, not prismatic. Almost all of the tools are made of boulder flint. According to O.N. Bader and A.N. Rogachev, Sungir most likely belongs to the late stage of the Streletskaya culture.
Among the Upper Paleolithic neoanthropes, the Sunghir has a certain similarity with Oberkassel (height 176.7 cm) and some men of Pshedmosti (Pshedmosti XIV. Height 176.1 cm).
By many external features, the Sungir burial is very similar to the burial of the same time from the Arena Candide site (Italy, 23,000 BC). Also, the anthropological features of the skull of a teenager from Arena Candide resemble those of the Sungir boy. First of all, attention is drawn to the strong alveolar prognathism on both turtles, which is expressed in a significant protrusion of the upper jaw. The contradictory combination of a rather strong protrusion of the nasal bones with a low nose bridge complements the uniqueness of the appearance of both boys.
Sculptural portraits of a girl and a boy from the Sungir camp. Reconstruction by G.V. Lebedinskaya and T.S. Surnina.
Sungir 2 and Sungir 3 (Sungir 2.3). 25 - 29 thousand years. Homo sapiens.
Paired burial of a boy in an extended position 12-14 years old and a girl 9-10 years old. Both were buried at the same time, as evidenced by the objects placed in the grave and, most importantly, spears from the mammoth tusk, which are longer than human skeletons. At other sites and in the cultural layer of Sungir, no similar tools or even their fragments were known. The length of the first spear was 2, 42 m, the second - 1, 66 m. In addition to the spears, each of the skeletons had several darts and daggers from the mammoth tusk. Children's clothes were richly decorated with beads, bracelets, rings and other adornments on their hands. The boy is wearing a belt on which hang ornaments - pendants - 250 fox teeth. Bracelets, rings on fingers, etc. Near the girl's skeleton there is a miniature spear from a straightened mammoth tusk and lion's claws with holes. Rods, darts and flint points. Children are dressed in furs. The girl has them decorated with bone beads - 5200 beads. A bone needle with a hole and two "dart straighteners" were found.
The finds of Sungir are brighter than other Paleolithic sites, evidence of the existence in the 30th millennium BC. religions: "animism, belief in the afterlife, totemism, magic, ancestor worship, worship of the sun and moon, the lunar calendar and arithmetic counting."
Sungir 5
Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a man (Sungir 5) // Lebedinskaya G.V. - M .: Nauka, 2006 .-- P. 59.
Art, ornament, symbolism, astronomy
The found figurines of animals - a mammoth and a saiga horse - are rare works of primitive art.
In the burial of a girl and a boy, three ritual discs with a diameter of several centimeters, made of mammoth tusk, were found. The discs have four or eight slots running from the periphery to the central hole and located opposite each other. One disc contains ten slots that are asymmetric with respect to the center. Bone discs were found on the girl's head and body.
Mammoth ivory discs contain a geometric ornament, about which V.I. Larichev, in particular, reports: “Objects of art, combined with iconic records of calendar and astronomical content, are highly information-rich sources for studying the intellectual and spiritual spheres of life of the aboriginal population of the north of Eurasia. They appear at the early stage of the Upper Paleolithic (34 - 24 thousand years ago - the Syisk and Malta cultures of Siberia; the settlement of Sungir - in the north of European Russia), remain remarkable products of artistic creativity of the early and late Middle Ages and survive until ethnographic modernity. "
Objects similar to Sungir discs are found in all periods of ancient and modern history, mainly in relation to the habitat of the Slavs. Disks and circles, geometrically divided into equal 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 sectors, are still typical Slavic symbols. For example, the 4-sector disc symbolizes the god Horse, an indication of four key astronomical events: the spring equinox, summer solstice, autumn equinox, and winter solstice. 6-sector disk - Perun's wheel. 12-sector disk - the symbol of the god Kolyada (calendar).
“Such persistent adherence to one and the same informational traditions can be explained simply - in such objects of art, fundamental, not subject to oblivion, information about the temporal and spatial representations of the creators of the cultures of the preliterate history of mankind was imprinted. What is often perceived by archaeologists as examples of artistic creativity or cult-ritual, symbolic (votive) style of objects, is, in reality, a semblance of the canonized, sacred nature of "works", in which the most essential and hidden ( sacred) from everything known in Nature and man, in the relationship between people and the surrounding world (temporal rhythms of economic and cult-ritual actions; systems of natural science and religious ideas). "
Slotted discs. Mammoth tusk
A slotted disk from the excavations of the Palaeolithic site Sungir. The disc is 25 thousand years old.
Size: d-5.5 cm, thickness - 0.3 cm.
Excavations in 1969 at the Sungir (Dobroselskaya) Paleolithic site near the city of Vladimir. He was in the northern burial, on one of the bone darts. The author of the find: O.N. Bader.
Slotted disc made of mammoth ivory. It has one central round hole d-0.8 cm and 8 radial holes, elongated and tapered towards the center, measuring 1.3 x 0.7 cm.
HE. Bader suggests that colored straps or tails of Arctic foxes were attached to the slots of these discs, worn on spears or darts, and these darts served as a kind of ceremonial emblems or had some special ceremonial significance.
The disc was found in a pair burial of adolescents in the Sungir parking lot. It was included, along with other similar disks, zoomorphic figurines, bone beads, bracelets, rings, etc., into the burial inventory.
Works of primitive art.
Figurine of a horse (saiga) from the excavations of the Palaeolithic site Sungir. The figurine is 25 thousand years old.
Material, technique: Mammoth tusk, carving, grinding, drilling.
Size: H-5.6 cm, thickness - from 4 to 1 mm.
Found during archaeological excavations in 1957 at the Sungir (Dobroselskaya) Paleolithic site near the city of Vladimir. The author of the find: O.N. Bader.
A flat zoomorphic figurine, decorated with dotted patterns and painted with ocher. The surface of the figure is carefully polished. On the hind leg there is a through hole, d-2-2.5 mm, made by double-sided drilling. The animal is shown schematically, in profile, each pair of legs is depicted as a wedge-shaped protrusion.
It was used as a pendant-amulet, as evidenced by the strong polish of the surface. The front of the head is sharpened almost like a blade, suggesting some kind of production function.
It is widely known as a symbol of the Sungir site.
"Rod" from the excavations of the Paleolithic site Sungir. 25 thousand years.
Material, technique: Mammoth tusk; carving, grinding, drilling.
Size: H-18.5 cm, width: max - 4.8 cm, min - 1 cm, thickness - 1.1 cm.
Excavations in 1969 at the Sungir (Dobroselskaya) Paleolithic site near the city of Vladimir. He was in the northern burial, on the left side, in the area of the girl's abdomen. The author of the find: O.N. Bader.
A "wand" made of mammoth ivory, having a quadrangular head (5 x 4.5 cm), in the center of which a round hole d-2.3 cm is made. The handle of the "wand" 14 cm long has an oval cross-section, more flattened towards the end, slightly sharpened ... The "rod" most likely had a ritual purpose. HE. Bader considers it to be "a kind of belt buckle."
On the front side of the product, along the circumference of the hole on the head, along both sides of the head and up to the middle of the handle, there are shallowly drilled round points.
The "rod" was found in a pair burial of teenagers in the Sungir parking lot. He entered, along with other "wands", zoomorphic figurines.
The wands of the chiefs are also an exotic find for the Upper Paleolithic of Italy, while in France they are quite common.
Beads
A necklace was found, in the manufacture of which the surface of the beads was processed so that adjacent beads were perpendicular to each other.
Beads, bracelets
Bracelets
Ring
Labor tools (flint)
People were buried in compliance with the most complex funeral rites. The discovered rich and varied material presents unique data on the way of life, religious beliefs and rituals of our ancestors. The finds of Sungir are brighter than other Paleolithic monuments, testifying to the existence in the 30th millennium BC. religions: "animism, belief in the afterlife, totemism, magic, ancestor worship, worship of the sun and moon, the lunar calendar and arithmetic counting."
The number of adornments accompanying the deceased increases enormously. For each buried 25-28 thousand years ago, there is an average of 4-5 thousand beads, pendants, amulets and other adornments, carefully and skillfully made from animal teeth, mammoth tusks and soft stones.
The paired burial of adolescents has a mirrored structure. In the cultural layer of another Upper Paleolithic settlement - Gagarino (Upper Don, Voronezh region) - an unfinished figurine from a mammoth tusk was discovered, which depicts two human figures in a similar pose - their heads touching. The double image is associated with proto-Slavic fertility cults, namely, with the myths of twins - the Slavic twin gods Kupalo and Kupalnitsa (brother and sister; Kupalo holiday is celebrated on the night of June 21-22). This burial ritual is associated with fertility cult.
